Hospital circumcision rates down; is bad publicity a factor?

Hospital circumcision rates are down, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report -- and there doesn't seem to be any clear reason. The report from the center's weekly report on morbidity and mortality showed that, depending on what numbers you used, hospital circumcision rates from 1999 to 2008 dropped from 62.5% to 56.9% (National Hospital Discharge Survey) or from 63.5% to 56.3% (Nationwide Inpatient Sample). And according to SDIHealth, from 2001 to 2010 the rates dropped from 58.4% to 54.7%. Anyway, the point is that they're going down. And that's a surprise, given that hospital circumcision rates were on the upswing in the previous decade. The practice has come under fire in recent times, most famously in San Francisco, where advocates attempted to make circumcision illegal (and more locally in Santa Monica, though that attempt soon died). It's considered inhumane by some because it is performed before the child is old enough to make an informed decision on the matter.